Sustainability Survey

In Spring of 2009, the WI Sustainable Business Council, the UW’s E-Business Institute and the WI Department of Natural Resource’s Green Tier Program conducted a survey on “sustainability” efforts of large businesses in Wisconsin. The survey was intended to be both a snapshot in time, and also serve as a baseline against which companies can measure future sustainability efforts.

The target respondents were the 100 largest companies in Wisconsin, determined by a list compiled by Forward Wisconsin (2005). Phone calls were placed to each company with a request to identify who (if anyone) at the company was championing their sustainability work. 85 companies were able to identify a champion. The survey was then sent via email to the identified “champion” three separate times over a series of several weeks.

This survey used the term “sustainability” but is meant to encompass efforts of companies to green their business, to improve their environmental or social performance, or in other ways to respond to stakeholder pressures to be better citizens or be more responsible.

We received responses from 39 of the 85 champions that we emailed. This 46% response rate was very encouraging, indicating that large companies are paying attention to sustainability. A majority of companies indicated that they are leading their sectors in their understanding and implementation of sustainability efforts and have also taken the initial steps to develop a corporate sustainability strategy.

The vast majority of respondents are active in the sustainability area, focusing mainly on energy efficiency, the development of sustainability metrics, and identifying their carbon footprint. When asked about future focus areas, the most common responses were energy efficiency and sustainability reporting. Driving forces towards sustainability appear to be cost reduction and efficiency improvement as well as corporate image and brand reputation. Conversely, cost and perceived lack of return on their investments are sited as being the biggest barriers to sustainability.

Some of the more surprising results of the survey were that relatively few respondents involved their employees in sustainability efforts, internal sustainability reporting was surprisingly absent and most companies were not actively soliciting or shaping the behavior of their suppliers.

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To see our entire initial analysis, please view or print the complete survey analysis.